I've also always been interested in environments.  Perhaps it comes from building cardboard box forts and igloos as a child, or from visiting funhouse darkrides and Walt Disney World.  I don't know.  All that I know is that the places in a game are as interesting and compelling to me as the characters and the plot.

For many years, I used First Person Shooter engines like Quake, Half-life, and Unreal to build replicas of locations in our tabletop games: the party's chantry in a mage game, a character's house, an airship, and so forth.  The idea was not to play the video game within these locations, it was to give a sense of place, so that players could immediately go "Oh, I know exactly what that looks like!" when a scene was described at the tabletop.

Just as it is helpful to be able to say "He drives a Lamborghini" to provoke an instant image (rather than having to describe to everyone the shape of the car, the sound of the engine, the quality of the construction, what it implies about the character, and so forth), being able to show someone exactly what their secret base looks like is helpful.  You might even say it's the 3D equivalent of a lovingly crafted dungeon map, or like an architectural walk-through of our imagination.


Then along came the internet, MUDs and Mushes, IRC games, IM games, play-by-email, VOIP, MMORPGs, etc.  I've tinkered with most of these, but something always seemed lacking when trying to roleplay in them.

Taking a tabletop game online always presents some minor obstacles (mostly finding software everyone can use).  It also introduces some opportunities, like the ability for players to meet regardless of geographical location, which is important when you get older and friends move away.  Among others, it also offers the ability to use our machines to help build our worlds in the imaginations of the players, like my old FPS demos.

Most of methods of online gaming are focused on text, with only a minimal nod toward visuals or audio.  This is in some ways a benefit, but it can also be limiting (a picture is worth a thousand words, after all).  And that's what always seemed missing to me; here we have these powerful machines, capable of reality-simulation that exceeds that of a supercomputer from twenty years ago, and we use them for the digital equivalent of passing notes in class.

Even those gaming venues that rely on graphics (MMORPGs and the like) aren't particularly flexible; even if you have the skills/desire to create your own (and a LOT of people do), you are stuck with the environments, character outfits, and genre that the developers deign to give you.  Such games are also typically based on a subscription model, and typically every player must buy-in; this can easily be death for a tabletop game. 

Of course, there are reasons for the flexibility limitation, not the least of which is the fact that high quality graphics are very time consuming and require varying degrees of skill to create.  Still, there is much room for compromise between "photorealistic graphics, but no flexibility" and "total flexibility, but no graphics".

(To be continued...)